> The article also talks a lot about per capita investment.
Comedian Ari Eldjarn has a really good joke a bout "per capita". It's an economist term, but in Iceland every five year old knows the phrase, because we, as a nation, are very frequently outliers when it comes to per capita, due to the small size of the population it doesn't take much in absolute terms, to skew the average very high or very low.
Also, as an Icelander who escaped to London almost a decade ago, I agree with everything bbarn has said. Most annoying to me was the fact that I could be a top expert in my field, and still only make about 50% above median income (assuming I can even find employment in Iceland doing that work). The bell curve in Iceland is very narrow, with almost no tail. In London I'm getting paid 4-5x what I got in Iceland, with significantly lower cost of living (and no inflation linked mortgage; if you want to be outraged, read about Icelandic mortgages)
I always tell people; Iceland is a great place to live, if you're happy being an average person, who drives an average car, lives in an average house, have an average family, with common hobbies and average ambition. If you dare dreaming bigger than that, you are considered a narcissistic capitalist and nobody likes you.
People are very supportive of start-ups, as long as they're not very successful. Once they start taking off and earning money, people change their tune. Then suddenly it's all "they couldn't possibly have been that successful without corruption", and "they need to pay more taxes"...
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I remember reading comments on various social networks, where people cheered when my family's hotel business failed. A spate of cancelled bookings after WOW air went bust (people also cheered that), ended up causing cashflow problems and eventually the hotel was shuttered and the property was repossessed. In the end it was sold for more than outstanding debt and every creditor got paid, including the bank. - but oh my god people lost their collective minds about this. "Corrupt capitalist scum getting their comeuppance" was sort of the summary of people's opinions. My dad literally worked himself to death fixing up that hotel and trying to make it successful (he had a sudden heart attack on location in 2017). My mom was left with a ~10 million krona stake in the business along (~80k USD) with her siblings who had a similar stake, but for most of them this was a significant portion of their savings.
Just ordinary people trying to work hard and take a small risk to make something big happen, but people couldn't have that.
Comedian Ari Eldjarn has a really good joke a bout "per capita". It's an economist term, but in Iceland every five year old knows the phrase, because we, as a nation, are very frequently outliers when it comes to per capita, due to the small size of the population it doesn't take much in absolute terms, to skew the average very high or very low.
Also, as an Icelander who escaped to London almost a decade ago, I agree with everything bbarn has said. Most annoying to me was the fact that I could be a top expert in my field, and still only make about 50% above median income (assuming I can even find employment in Iceland doing that work). The bell curve in Iceland is very narrow, with almost no tail. In London I'm getting paid 4-5x what I got in Iceland, with significantly lower cost of living (and no inflation linked mortgage; if you want to be outraged, read about Icelandic mortgages)
I always tell people; Iceland is a great place to live, if you're happy being an average person, who drives an average car, lives in an average house, have an average family, with common hobbies and average ambition. If you dare dreaming bigger than that, you are considered a narcissistic capitalist and nobody likes you.
People are very supportive of start-ups, as long as they're not very successful. Once they start taking off and earning money, people change their tune. Then suddenly it's all "they couldn't possibly have been that successful without corruption", and "they need to pay more taxes"...
---
I remember reading comments on various social networks, where people cheered when my family's hotel business failed. A spate of cancelled bookings after WOW air went bust (people also cheered that), ended up causing cashflow problems and eventually the hotel was shuttered and the property was repossessed. In the end it was sold for more than outstanding debt and every creditor got paid, including the bank. - but oh my god people lost their collective minds about this. "Corrupt capitalist scum getting their comeuppance" was sort of the summary of people's opinions. My dad literally worked himself to death fixing up that hotel and trying to make it successful (he had a sudden heart attack on location in 2017). My mom was left with a ~10 million krona stake in the business along (~80k USD) with her siblings who had a similar stake, but for most of them this was a significant portion of their savings.
Just ordinary people trying to work hard and take a small risk to make something big happen, but people couldn't have that.